The first line outputs the list of files into a file called fileList.txt. The second line separates each of the names in the list into 3 parts, the #, the "-" and the rest of the name. For each of those it does the rename command.

I use Total Commander's multi-rename tool (ctrl+M) for things like this. Their useful tool, one of too many to count, is easy to use, and can also employ regular expressions and templates if necessary. Oh, and it obviously gives you a preview before making any changes.

This is the third or fourth question I've answered recommending Total Commander... I should be getting a commission from them ;-)

The tokens are the "parts" of the filename, the delims are the separators. Note that in my case, I had 2 delimiters (a dash and a dot).

I personally don't care for the "Bulk Rename" app. As others have mentioned, the GUI is atrocious and not very intuitive. With a little research and simple coding, these things can be done much mroe efficiently and quickly.

I use Blackboard to administer courses in a University. When I download an assignment in mass (in Blackboard, click top of grading column, then "assignment file download" Blackboard adds a bunch of extra stuff to the file name -often making the file name too long to be valid on Windows.

I have developed a hybrid JScript/batch command line utility called JREN.BAT that can rename files or folders by performing a regular expression search and replace on the names. It is pure script that will run natively on any Windows machine from XP forward. Full documentation is embedded within the script.

Assuming JREN.BAT is in your current directory, or better yet, somewhere within your path, then your rename task becomes trivial.

jren "^\d+[ -]+(.+)\.txt$" "$1" /i

or

jren "^\d+[ -]+(?=.+\.)" "" /fm "*.txt"

There are many options, including the /S option that recursively performs the rename on sub-directories.

If you need serious power and are willing to shell out the money... PowerGrep is one of the most powerful and versatile tools on the market... you can rename almost anything with PowerGrep... even binary search and replace... it's created by RegEx Guru, Jan Goyvaerts.